1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates generally to scan data workflow processing, and more specifically, to methods and systems for identifying and utilizing post processing capabilities of devices to process a scan workflow and to generate a final output.
2. Discussion of Related Art
In a network environment, a number of devices exist for providing pre and post processing capabilities for users of the network. For example, some users may utilize the devices for scanning documents to generate scanned document data, while other users may perform color correction processing on the scanned document data before printing the corrected data on a color printer.
As the number of devices placed into service within the network environment changes over time, some newer devices may include capabilities not found on older devices. Thus, over time, a mixture of old and new devices in the network environment may lead to confusion by users about what capabilities a specific device actually has. For example, some devices may include Optical Character Recognition (OCR) functions, while other devices may not. Thus, over time, it may be difficult for a user to correctly identify specific devices which include the functionality sought after by the user for post processing of data.
When the devices are in operation within the network environment, a number of options exist for a user to access the devices to perform the desired pre and post processing activities. For example, some devices may include local displays providing various interfaces to internal services on the devices, such as a scan to an Adobe Portable Document Format (PDF) file service or a scan to a data file service. Other devices within the network environment may be more limited, and instead require a user to run software on a computer to access the capabilities of the devices.
Regardless of how a user may access any specific device, the user may wish to perform a number of post processing steps on data which may or may not be present at any one device. For example, if a user of a device wishes to scan a document to a PDF file, the user may be required to identify a particular device which includes both the scanning functionality and the PDF generation functionality in order to generate a desired final output of the document. When any one device does not include all the desired post processing functionality, a user may be required to transfer some intermediate format data from the device to a computer for post processing. This may only be available to a user, however, when the user has access to a computer which includes the desired post processing functionality.
After the user generates the scan data and performs a number of post processing steps on the scan data, the user may wish to provide the post processing output to a particular destination, such as an email address or a network location. In a manner similar to post processing, various destinations may or may not be available based on the specific device the user is operating. For example, a user may be scanning and post processing data on a device which only supports the destination capability of a network location. The user may desire, however, that the final output be placed on a memory card, such as a USB flash drive. In order to receive the final output on the USB flash drive, the user may be required to transfer the data to a computer and manually place the data on the USB flash drive to generate the desired final output.
In some cases, an administrator may wish to restrict specific users or groups of users to certain functions, services, and/or destinations for the final output of the scan data. This type of restriction is not easily accomplished in the present technology.
Thus it is an ongoing challenge to identify and utilize the capabilities of various devices to process an entire scan workflow and to correctly and reliably generate a final output for a user.